Against Timarchus (51-55)

Now, fellow citizens, if Timarchus here had remained with Misgolas and never gone to another man’ s house, his conduct would have been more decent—if really any such conduct is decent—and I should not have ventured to bring any other charge against him than that which the lawgiver describes in plain words, simply that he was a kept man. For the man who practises this thing with one person, and practises it for pay, seems to me to be liable to precisely this charge.

But if, saying nothing about these bestial fellows, Cedonides, Autocleides, and Thersandrus, and simply telling the names of those in whose houses he has been an inmate, I refresh your memories and show that he is guilty of selling his person not only in Misgolas’ house, but in the house of another man also, and again of another, and that from this last he went to still another, surely you will no longer look upon him as one who has merely been a kept man, but—by Dionysus, I don’ t know how I can keep glossing the thing over all day long—as a common prostitute. For the man who follows these practices recklessly and with many men and for pay seems to me to be chargeable with precisely this.

Well, when now Misgolas found him too expensive and dismissed him, next Anticles, son of Callias, the deme Euonymon, took him up. Anticles, however, is absent in Samos as a member of the new colony, so I will pass on to the next incident. For after this man Timarchus had left Anticles and Misgolas, he did not repent or reform his way of life, but spent his days in the gambling-place, where the gaming-table is set, and cock-fighting and dice-throwing are the regular occupations. I imagine some of you have seen the place; at any rate you have heard of it.

Among the men who spend their time there is one Pittalacus, a slave-fellow who is the property of the city. He had plenty of money, and seeing Timarchus spending his time thus he took him and kept him in his own house. This foul wretch here was not disturbed by the fact that he was going to defile himself with a public slave, but thought of one thing only, of getting him to be paymaster for his own disgusting lusts; to the question of virtue or of shame he never gave a thought.

Now the sins of this Pittalacus against the person of Timarchus, and his abuse of him, as they have come to my ears, are such that, by the Olympian Zeus, I should not dare to repeat them to you. For the things that he was not ashamed to do in deed, I had rather die than describe to you in words. But about the same time, while, as I have said, he was staying with Pittalacus, here comes Hegesandrus, back again from the Hellespont. I know you are surprised that I have not mentioned him long before this, so notorious is what I am going to relate.